


From Russia, With Love

by VillainousTalking (rainbowshoes)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Memory Loss, Obsession, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Stalking, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 10:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15947123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshoes/pseuds/VillainousTalking
Summary: There are eight different forms of love, and Bucky has experienced each of them.





	From Russia, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this](http://sirenoirs.tumblr.com/post/177145803217/platonic-love-is-real-love-and-shouldnt-be-treated) post

It was unusual for his masters to allow him so much freedom on an assignment, but the Asset was...grateful for it this time. He does not know of a time when he was last allowed away from handlers or to be kept out of cryofreeze for so long. Yet he understands the delicate nature of this assignment, even if he does not understand why it must be done. He is merely an asset, as his name suggests. He is not permitted to ask such questions or receive answers. So he performs the essential reconnaissance tasks as required, and he is patient.

Howard Stark was once a genius. Bucky found that much from a quick search through old archives in a library. Yet he's been lacking, lately. He keeps up with his military contracts, as per information from a less legal source, but his performance even then is not quite as satisfactory as it once was. His new business partner, Stane, smooths over all the ruffled feathers Stark leaves behind, but a picture begins to form for the Asset regarding the reason for Stark’s imminent removal. Useless tools hold no value, and Stark has grown quite useless to HYDRA.

The assignment, however, is not simply for Howard Stark's removal. The Asset must eliminate the family and retrieve Stark's newest invention. Stark’s wife, Maria, is a vapid, vain woman. She holds zero interest for the Asset, save for how to best be rid of her. The pair of them also have a son, however.

The Asset knows the son is away at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - that much was easy to discover. Yet once the Asset gets to the campus, it takes him three days to actually track down his target. He is never where he should be, and he's never where anyone thinks he is, either. The Asset does not locate Anthony “Tony" Stark until the day of some sort of presentation, where the Asset watches from a secret place as his target demonstrates a bodiless voice that responds to commands.

The son is more intelligent than the father. The Asset thinks he understands why he must be eliminated. Yet he loathes to do so. It isn't for the Asset to question why, so he merely accepts this instinct. It has saved his life in the past, though how he knows that for certain he can't say.

The Asset should leave, should simply return to New York City and continue with his mission, yet he stays. Tony is popular and loud and never alone. He drinks and snorts powders and takes women and men alike to bed - different people every night, sometimes more than one. It's strange and captivating. His target seems to have only one friend who cares for his safety, once dragging him by the back of his shirt from a party, almost to the point of choking him. The Asset finds he has his gun in his hand, yet he doesn't recall making the move to draw it.

The campus empties in a day, and the Asset assumes it is the end of the semester. His target is still there, alone at last. The Asset knows he should take his chance and make his move now, yet he hesitates. He lingers until dark, and then he waits until it is after midnight. It's laughably easy to breach the apartment where his target lives. The open window in winter would, perhaps, be a cause for concern. Yet the Asset doesn't feel the cold so many other students seem to complain about. He thinks, perhaps, his target does not feel it either.

Without a sound, the Asset drops into the cluttered living area. He knows his target is here, even if he cannot see or hear him. The Asset takes a moment and focuses his hearing, tuning in every sound in the vicinity. He can hear a television from the apartment next door and a radio from the one below. There is a crying woman three floors away and a man shouting somewhere far enough away that the Asset cannot hear the words. All he can hear from this apartment is the hum from the refrigerator, the soft dripping of a faucet, and a distant buzzing sound. No breathing.

The Asset moves silently through the apartment. His target sleeps in the north bedroom, the friend in the south bedroom. The friend left earlier with the others. His target is alone. His target should be here. Yet he can't hear any signs of life.

The Asset pushes open the bedroom door and steps inside. No sign of the target on the bed or sprawled in the floor as the Asset once saw from his view of the target’s bedroom from the building across the street. But the bathroom light is on. The Asset moves closer, stands at the door, and tilts his ear toward the thin crack between the door and the jamb. He can hear a stuttering heartbeat.

Fear flashes through the Asset. If someone has taken his assignment from him, he will face far steeper consequences than even letting the target get away. He slams his palm into the door and it swings open too hard. He catches the handle before it can smash into the wall or anything else. He doesn't question his fear, he merely  _acts_.

The target is on the floor. He is curled around himself beside the tub, his eyes closed. The Asset's eyes flash over every detail in the room - the dirty clothes, the bright pink bra in the corner, the orange pill bottles and tiny yellow tablets scattered across the floor, the razor blade and powder and credit card discarded on the counter, the trail of blood dripping from his target’s nose.

“какого черта.” The Asset kneels beside his target, ripping the glove from his right hand as he goes. He shoves two fingers roughly to the target’s neck, feeling for the pulse he can hear - he has to make sure. He can't see his target breathing, after all. The heartbeat could be his own - he has made that mistake before, he thinks.

When the Asset feels the target's pulse the first time, it almost makes him jerk his hand away. His training keeps his hand still, but it takes another agonizing second before he realizes he can still feel it. It's weak and thready, but it's there. The Asset doesn't question anyone, not even himself, so when he yanks his target up by his shirt and shoves his fingers down the target's throat until he's gagging, the Asset doesn't pretend like he knows why or try to justify it to himself.

The target vomits into the toilet as soon as the Asset shoves him forward over the bowl. The Asset stands and moves to the sink, runs his hand under water from the tap, then soaks a rag he finds. He crouches beside his target once more and offers it once he's finished vomiting. The target has his arms crossed over the seat and his head resting in the crook of an elbow. He rolls his head to the side to stare at the Asset.

“Hey creepy murder guy,” the target slurs. He grins a blood-tinted grin. The Asset has never been squeamish about blood - he’s very nearly bathed in it on occasion, some small part of his brain tells him - but this makes his stomach turn. He carefully wipes at the blood under the target's nose, then sets the rag on the floor.

The Asset stands. The target makes some noise, but the Asset can't understand what he says. He crouches beside the target and gathers him in his arms, holding him close to his chest. The target is light and bony and so very frail. It would be so easy to complete the assignment, but the Asset doesn't want to. Instead, he carries the target to his bed and sets him down carefully before tugging up the blankets.

“How ‘bout a goodnight kiss?” the target slurs, blinking slowly. The Asset shakes his head and backs away slowly. The target closes his eyes and does not open them again, but his breathing is steady and even now.

The Asset remains, perched on the edge of the target's dresser until dawn. He leaves just as what's left of the city begins to stir, but he doesn't go far. From his bolthole across the street, the Asset watches the target wake and mutter to himself. He showers and dresses and packs, then he leaves.

The Asset follows. The target goes to New York. The mansion just outside the city, where the other two Starks reside, is only slightly harder to observe. The Asset listens in using the bugs he’d left behind previously, and he watches from the branches of nearby trees.

The first time Howard Stark strikes his son, the Asset merely watches. The second and third times, the Asset has to fight his impulse to break in and end his mission once and for all. The fourth time, Maria turns away with a sick expression, but she does nothing to stop it, and Tony just laughs. The Asset breaks a tree branch in his anger.

Then, one day, Howard and Maria leave. The Asset follows them. He has heard they are leaving for two weeks, and Tony will be alone in the big mansion. He watches Howard stop by one secure facility and leave with a case in hand which he stores in the trunk of his car before they leave for another facility. The Asset realizes that  _this_ is what he has been sent to retrieve.

The road he attacks them on is remote, yet there are street lamps here and there with cameras. He shoots out the tire and watches as Howard crashes his car. He snaps the man's neck after the man calls him some name he doesn't recognize, and he slowly strangles Maria. He leaves them in the car, and it looks as if they died like that because of the crash. Only then does he shoot the camera. HYDRA will take care of any footage.

The Asset takes the case from the trunk and stores it on his bike. Yet he doesn't return to his masters right away. He heads back to the mansion. His last target is high once more, and the deep purple bruise under his eye is simply the only visible mark. The Asset watches and listens as the police inform Tony of his parents’ deaths later that night. Tony is so high that all he does is laugh in their faces before slamming the door. More time passes before Stane arrives. He sends Tony to bed.

The Asset must leave now before his handlers become too suspicious, but he wishes he could stay. He doesn't want to leave this curious young man behind. What sort of person laughs at the news of their parents’ deaths? He wants to protect his last target. He wants to ensure HYRDA never kills him. Yet he has an assignment to finish. He has risked too much by refusing to kill Tony.

His handlers praise him when he returns. They don't care that Tony is still alive. The Asset doesn't report on his curious sense of entitlement toward Tony. He despises the chair and the pain associated with it. He doesn't wish to return there. He disobeys his orders and remains silent instead. He is kept out of cryofreeze and the chair as a reward for his retrieval.

While the new soldiers are made, the Asset steals access to a computer. He's forbidden from doing so, but he needs to know more about Tony. It has been months since his return, after all, and he needs all the information he can find. It takes very little time to search for what he needs. His Tony - and the Asset does not know why or when Tony became  _his,_ but he doesn't doubt the assertion - is now in control of Howard's company. He has already renewed his father's military contracts. He promises many more amazing inventions. There is the familiar tingle of an old memory, but the Asset pushes it away. He doesn't care for those old flashes that hold no meaning.

He leaves the computer and heads off to his next assignment - working with the new soldiers to test their abilities. When they rebel, it takes him and more than fifty others to bring the other five to heel and lock them away in cryofreeze. The Asset is also locked away, but they don't put him in the chair first, and he keeps his memories of Tony. As the ice forms around him, the Asset keeps the image of Tony sleeping peacefully in his mind.

* * *

 

The next time the Asset is freed, he is sent to work with a group of girls. It has only been a year, he learns. He trains them in combat and stealth. He follows orders from his temporary masters and hurts the girls, though he dislikes the task. He is a killer, not a teacher. Yet the girls learn - and die.

The Black Widow program allows the Asset plenty of freedom to read anything he can find on his Tony. He has not forgotten. They have said his code words, thinking that is enough, but it did not take away his memories, and so he subverts his masters just a little. His Tony is brilliant - far smarter than he could have imagined. He wants to leave the girls and his masters behind and go protect his Tony from the world, but he knows he'll never make it that far. He contents himself with news articles and photographs from paparazzi. His Tony is beautiful.

He stays with the girls for four years. For four long, glorious years, the Asset obsesses over his Tony from afar. He watches as his Tony stumbles from one scandal to the next like it's some sort of game. He sees every picture, reads every article, watches every broadcast. There is a tiny slot inside his left arm where he can store data drives or other small bits, but he uses it on this assignment to store a picture of his Tony. It's a candid shot of his Tony with his friend from his college, a man the Asset now knows is named Rhodes. In the photo, his Tony is smiling a real smile, and even if the Asset cannot see all of it, he cherishes the smile. His Tony doesn't smile enough - not a real smile, anyway.

The first girl to survive and complete the Black Widow program becomes his partner for teaching the next group of girls. Natalia is cold and hard and everything the Asset made her to be, only more. Her other teachers gave her skills he could never have taught her. She uses her entire body as a weapon, and not just for fighting, but for gathering information and making men spill their secrets. She is as deadly as she is pretty. She names him Yasha when he tells her he has no name to give her.

He and Natalia are not lovers, though most assume they are. It's even encouraged by his temporary masters, though the Asset - Yasha - doesn't know why. He knows what they do to the girls. He knows they cannot form attachments. He cares for little Natalia, but he does not love her. She will die one day, and he probably won't. She may have some enhancements, but she is not like he is. Yasha thinks that he will be used as a lesson for her when he is inevitably sent away.

They share quarters, a bed, meals, and silence. He ignores her when she tries to seduce him, and he carefully hides his obsession with his Tony. He might never have the one he longs for, but he can't simply substitute his Tony for little Natalia. Instead, Natalia becomes his baby sister, and they are happier for the companionship.

When Yasha’s old masters come to claim him, he takes Natalia aside one last time. She's known the day was coming, and she'd taken the time to warn him. His new masters encourage them to take a few moments alone, believing that Natalia will suffer all the greater for his absence. They don't know the truth, but it's better that way.

Yasha tugs her into their room and wraps his arms around her one last time. “Take this,” he tells her, opening the compartment on his arm and tugging out the picture of his Tony. “If you find him, protect him.”

“Who is this?” she asks. Not why or how or anything else, just who. He loves her for it.

“Tony Stark,” he answers. “The masters don't know that I remember. They’ll make me forget him this time, make me forget you.” He kisses her forehead. “I saved him once.”

“He's yours,” she says with a nod. Yasha nods in return. Natalia stands on her toes and kisses his cheek. “I promise, Yasha, I will protect him.”

He presses his metal hand to her cheek one last time, then he leaves the room. She tucks the picture into her bra before following him. When they part at last, there are no tears or last goodbyes. They don't even look at one another. They both know how this ends. One day, they will have to fight. On that day, he will win, and she will likely die.

When he returns to Siberia with his masters, Yasha becomes the Asset once more, and he loses all memory of Natalia and his precious Tony.

**Author's Note:**

> you can hit me up on [my tumblr](https://shyglittercreature.tumblr.com/) to ask for prompts or just to talk


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